Israel decides not to probe the 2006 shelling of Beit Hanoun in which 21 civilians were killed

Wednesday February 27, 2008 14:32

by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

The Israeli Military Advocate General ruled on Tuesday that the Israeli military shelling to Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, which lead to the death of 21 Palestinian civilians in November 2006 when the shells hit their homes, is a result of what he described as malfunction and no action will be taken against the soldiers involved in the attack.

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The Military Advocate Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, stated that there will be no military probe into the incident.

Following the deadly shelling of the civilian neighborhood in Beit Hanoun, the then-Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Hallutz, ordered a probe into the shelling in order to “examine the circumstances surrounding the incident”, Israeli Ynetnews reported.

Ynetnews added that the investigation team was led by the then-Deputy Ground Forces Commander, Meir Kalifi, and that the findings of the probe were presented before Mendelblit.

Commenting on the ruling, the Israeli Army stated that this “proves that the incident was unintentional and was caused by a grave malfunction in the control mechanism of the artillery unit”

Mendelblit stated in his ruling that since a malfunction was determined upon investigating the incident, there is no cause to link it to a possible human error, and that there was no negligence in the conduct of the soldiers involved in the incident.

13 of the casualties were members of the same family and additional forty residents were injured in the shelling. Most of the casualties were women and children.